Tragedy and danger discovered in Pottstown's mining heritage

This was the home of James Gilbert, owner of the farm where the copper mine was being worked in 1880. Gilbert bought this house and 40 acres from the estate of his father-in-law, Ludwig Bickel in 1853. The house is now the office of Highland Memorial Park. (Photo by John Strickler/The Mercury)

A view of the Gilbert farm taken from Farmington Avenue, then the main road from Pottstown to Boyertown. The location of the copper mine is unknown. (Photo by John Strickler/The Mercury)

Jefferson Moser Rightnour was born on Aug. 26, 1844, in Fruitville, Limerick Township, Montgomery County, the son of Charles and Lydia (Moser) Rightnour. He was living in Fruitville once again when on Sept. 1, 1880, a mishap in a copper mine near Pottstown claimed his life.

During the Civil War, Rightnour served in Company A of the 28th Pennsylvania Infantry. In October of 1865, just a few months after he was discharged from the Army, he married Sarah Schilpp.

Reports indicate family members spent most of their lives in the Pottstown and Fruitville areas. The 1870 federal census shows Jefferson, who was working as a carpenter, and Sarah and their three children living in the Ringing Hill area of what is now Lower Pottsgrove Township.

Sometime prior to the summer of 1880 they moved to Fruitville. Though they had six children by 1880 only five of them lived at home. The oldest child, John W., had been sent out as a laborer on a nearby farm belonging to Jacob Laver.

Jefferson Rightnour was buried on Sept. 4 in the cemetery of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Boyertown. In an article about his funeral, The Ledger mentioned that after his body was brought home from the mine it was “placed on a board near a wall,” and while lying there a “large part of the plastering fell from the wall, burying the body beneath the debris,” and this “strange occurrence awakened the superstitious fears of those who witnessed it.”

After Jefferson’s death, Sarah married a local man, Isaac Kline. She died May 22, 1904, at her home in Fruitville and is buried in the Limerick church burial grounds at the intersection of Ridge Pike and Limerick Center Road.

Charles J. Rightnour, just a boy at the time of the copper mining accident that killed his father, survived the trauma of seeing the man’s mangled body brought to the surface from underground. He grew, got a job, married Ella Sell, and together they had nine children. He died Sept. 8, 1936, at his home in Sanatoga, Lower Pottsgrove Township, and is buried in the east section of the Pottstown Cemetery.

Jefferson M. Rightnour left his wife and six children at their home in Fruitville, a small collection of houses in Limerick Township, Montgomery County, on Sept. 1, 1880, and walked to his job in what is now Pottstown.

The 6-mile trek must have been a hardship, but it was nothing compared to what was waiting for him. Rightnour was the boss of a copper mine; he worked underground with a pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow, busting through sandstone to get to copper ore.

The mine was located on a 40-acre farm owned by James Gilbert in what was then Pottsgrove Township. An 1877 atlas of Montgomery County shows that Gilbert’s farmhouse was probably what is now the business office for Highland Memorial Park at 701 Farmington Ave. The precise location of the mine isn’t known, but it was probably somewhere along the slope of the hill in that area.

Copper had been mined there in the mid-1850s, but the endeavor was unprofitable and was soon abandoned. In July of 1874, a group of investors from Phoenixville took a crack it. The Daily Pottstown Ledger reported that excavators reopening the shaft found, at a depth of 18 feet, a wheelbarrow and box of potatoes — reportedly still “in good condition” — relics entombed in the 1850s workings.

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Operations in the “potato” mine must have been short-lived; in November 1879, The Ledger noted that “work has resumed at the copper mines on James Gilbert’s farm in Pottsgrove.”

By the end of April the mine was up and running, and The Ledger reported that with 12 to 14 men employed, “mostly new hands,” the operation was bringing up “about three tons of ore daily.”

Life in the 1880s in the Pottstown area was much more dangerous than it is today. Discounting all the illness, such as smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, that routinely put people in their graves, there were a multitude of hazards that plagued daily existence. People were injured in their homes by fire, explosions, and poison, and they were sickened by unclean water and poor sanitation. They fell out of trees while picking cherries. They were gored by bulls, stepped on by cows, kicked and bitten by horses and mules, and occasionally savaged by stray dogs. And they were injured at railroad crossings or when hopping a ride on a freight car.

The term “work place safety,” had it even existed at that time, would have been an oxymoron. Farmers were routinely injured and maimed by their machines or livestock. Factory workers had limbs crushed, skulls fractured and ribs broken by falling metal or by being caught in machinery. Men were blinded by exploding cinder in the iron mills, and railroaders were run over by their cars, caught between couplings, burned by explosions and injured in wrecks.

Workers were accustomed to this. So the men who worked at that copper mine considered all the horrible things that could happen to them as just another normal day on the job.

A detailed description of conditions under which the men at the Gilbert copper mine worked leave no doubt that there was little safety practiced there.

On the morning of May 26, a “mass of earth and ore became detached” and fell on Francis High, burying him beneath the debris. Fortunately, there were enough workers at hand to quickly dig him out, and he escaped with broken ribs and “possible internal injuries.” The Ledger noted that he would be “off duty for some time.”

That evening, Jefferson Rightnour was mining ore at the breast at the end of a 120-foot tunnel when he was overcome. Almost at the point of passing out, he was nonetheless able to climb into the bucket and was hoisted into the fresh air at the surface, where “efforts to revive him were for a long time in vain.” It was speculated that sulphur fumes were the cause of his collapse, and he was near death when rescued.

During the last week in August, the shaft had reached a depth of 50 feet, and from there workers tunneled about 120 feet to the west, removing ore and rock as they went.

In its Sept. 2, 1880, issue, The Ledger provided a detailed account of conditions inside the mine. To get to the breast, the miners climbed down a 50-foot shaft, using a series of ladders that were “spliced together.” For safety, most of the drift or tunnel that Rightnour was in had been shored up with timbers, except for a small unsupported section at the end, where the mining was actually being done.

The ventilation was bad and the work space tiny; the floor was uneven and filled with holes. In addition, the work was done in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from the wick of a tiny oil lamp attached to the cap on each miner’s head.

That is where Jefferson Rightnour was working on the morning of Sept. 1 when he was killed by a 3,000-pound piece of sandstone that came loose from the left wall of the tunnel crushed him against the right wall.

Rightnour saw the rock coming but had no time to react. The man behind him, Israel Swavely of Lower Pottsgrove, escaped with a scratched leg.

The recovery effort was tedious and dangerous. The tunnel was only about 3 feet high and 2 to 3 feet wide, so there was room for only one man to work at the face. Thomas Sides, who ran the mine’s water pump, was that one. In a dangerous spot where the roof and sides weren’t secured by timbers, he worked on his knees for more than an hour, breaking up the boulder that held the dead miner pinned to the wall.

The workers eventually got Rightnour’s body to the surface where it was examined by a doctor. Then James Gilbert, the farmer who owned the mine property, put the corpse in his wagon and drove it to the Rightnour family’s home in Fruitville.

What made the scene more tragic was the presence of Rightnour’s 13-year-old son, Charlie, who had come to the mine with his father’s dinner. It is doubtful that this family owned a horse, so it is probable that young Charlie had to make the 12-mile round trip on foot to deliver his father’s meal and return home.

As The Ledger related, when told his father was injured, Charlie “stood the intelligence bravely,” but when “the corpse was stretched out on the ground” the reality of the situation hit home. “Oh! He’s dead!” he cried, and “stood gazing on the remains with a look of unutterable woe on his face.”

While the doctor made his examination, Charlie moved away from the scene and “gave vent to his grief,” while the “heart of each one in the crowd went out in sympathy for the boy.”

The mine eventually closed, probably sooner than later. In 1906, The Ledger noted it was reopening, but there is no record of it going into operation.

The farm’s owner, James Gilbert, retired and in 1885 moved to one of the homes he owned in Pottstown. He still owned the mine property when he died in 1893. The farm has been part of Highland Memorial Park since 1937.

About the Author

Mike Snyder is a retired teacher who writes monthly local history pieces for The Mercury.